It’s a good painting – meticulousiy rendered but not overwrought. I love the fact that this is a portrait of a woman who doesn’t need to be flattered. Her face shows all the pain and joy of living 87 years. It’s wonderful to see a portrait reveal something about a person’s interests and achievements instead of just their appearance.

No more Zeppelin. No more Skynyrd or Tom Petty or Rolling Stones. And not a whole lot more Don Cerphe Colwell, either.

Classic rock and the DJ who brought that music to local radio audiences long before the rock was considered “classic” are both fading from the airwaves. Beginning Monday, Colwell’s station, WTGB (94.7 FM, “The Globe”), will switch to playing contemporary pop tunes. With the demise of the region’s only classic rock outlet, the music that helped transform FM radio into a cultural force in the 1970s will become just another baby boomer memory.

Just 2 years ago I blogged about the new format for 94.7 to “The Globe” featuring classic rock. Lots of goals for a greener more community based station. As I suspected, it didn’t last.

Click the above link to a very interesting interview with Karolyn Grimes. She played Zuzu in the holiday classic film It’s a Wonderful Life.

Here’s a quote from the intro:

Grimes was Bailey’s six-year-old daughter Zuzu and uttered the now immortal closing line: “Teacher says every time a bell rings an angel gets his wings.”

Her Hollywood career was brought to an end in her early teens with the death of her parents, which led to her being sent away to live with her “mean” aunt.

She became a medical technician but experienced more tragedy with the death of several close family members, including the suicide of her son.

But since being “rediscovered” by a journalist in the 1980s, she has travelled the world as an unofficial ambassador for It’s A Wonderful Life – a film, she has since discovered, that has brought comfort to many a person, including herself.

I love this film and never tire of it. It’s one of the finest Christmas films but not because it takes place at Christmas. It’s about the good in everyone and the potential of every human life. However, it didn’t shy away from showing the meanness in people, too.

I downloaded Laura Marling’s EP My Manic and I last April and got the CD Alas I Cannot Swim earlier this month. She’s a singer/songwriter of incredible talent. She has a seemingly simple folk style and her lyrics are complex – especially for an 18-year-old. Her talent has not gone unnoticed. She’s been nominated for this year’s Mercury Music Prize in the UK.

Check out the video below and her music on iTunes or at her official site.

So, I missed The Gates in 2005. I will probably miss this one, too. Can I really justify a trip to NYC to see these waterfalls?
They look so cool. Only in New York City – right? DC never has cool stuff. Sure we have the Smithsonian and lots of formal buildings and pretty gardens but we never get stuff like this. DC is covered in tourist and yet we are boring.

Check out the official site to see photos of all the installations and their construction.

I know, why do I keep blogging obituaries? I only pick people I think are interesting or important to me. Rauschenberg is important — to me. His work has always fascinated and intrigued me and sometimes repelled me. Painter, printmaker, sculptor, and photographer – he did it all and combined it all. He broke rules right and left and I loved him for it. Break the boundries, blur the lines and accept accidents and inspirations.

“I usually work in a direction until I know how to do it, then I stop,” he said in an interview in the giant studio on Captiva in 2000. “At the time that I am bored or understand — I use those words interchangeably — another appetite has formed. A lot of people try to think up ideas. I’m not one. I’d rather accept the irresistible possibilities of what I can’t ignore.”

He added: “Anything you do will be an abuse of somebody else’s aesthetics. I think you’re born an artist or not. I couldn’t have learned it. And I hope I never do because knowing more only encourages your limitations.